Russian anti-corruption campaigner and opposition figure Alexei Navalny said on Thursday he had filed a lawsuit against Vladimir Putin after a company in which the Russian leader's son-in-law is a shareholder received $1.75 billion in state support.
The suit cited a Reuters investigation which reported that Putin's son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov, is a major shareholder in petrochemicals producer Sibur, which received $1.75 billion in funding from Russia's National Wealth Fund at an unusually low interest rate last year.
Navalny said Putin had violated Russian corruption laws by failing to declare a conflict of interest when he personally approved the financing. Navalny said he had filed the suit with the Tverskoi court, in Moscow.
It also asked the court to require Putin to recuse himself from any decisions about providing state funds for the Sibur project which benefited from the financing.
"Kirill Shamalov is the spouse of Putin's daughter. Putin giving money to a company where the beneficiary is his child's partner is a classic conflict of interest. Straight out of a textbook," Navalny wrote in a post on his blog.